


At The Heart of it All

by messitallup



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Chaptered, Character Death, F/M, Post TLJ, a lot of sadness at the start, but even she's a lil emo, definitely get smutty later, except rey bc she's my ray of sunshine, like wow they're all a lil emo, probs get smutty later, team work will make a dream work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-28 00:52:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13260168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/messitallup/pseuds/messitallup
Summary: After the battle on Crait, what's left of the rebellion is left wandering through space and wondering how the battle can go on. With their leaders gone and their only resources themselves, will they flounder lose hope forever or continue to fight until their last breaths?Rey finds herself struggling with her strengthening bond to Kylo Ren, who in turn, is faced with a momentous decision and one that will change the fate of the Force and all Force users to come.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In advance, I would like to apologise for the following outpouring of sadness.  
> (Also, points to those that spot the LOTR reference. I couldn't help myself, my little nerdy heart made me do it. Changed the quote slightly but I thought it was relevant.)

It was cold and dark when she woke. Her face pressed against the rough cracked seat leather, but she could still feel the coarse texture of the Jakku sand against her feet from her dream, lingering. See the flash of red on blue and hear the howls of pain as she pushed herself up from the bench she had been lying on. No, she and Ren had never fought on Jakku, but her mind didn’t need much prompting to push two of the more traumatic events of her life together, melding them into one. The fallen AT-AT turning to a sand-covered Millennium Falcon and her staff to a lightsaber.  
_You need a teacher. I could help you.  
_ She pushed all thoughts of Ren and Jakku from her head as she stood. Faintly through the door, she could hear the sound of footsteps and drifting conversations as all that remained of the Resistance lived and recovered from the events of the past few months in the corridor beyond. It hadn’t been hard on just her. In fact, it had been almost easiest for her. Others had been through a lot more. Others had lost a lot more.

 _There are so few. So few of us left_ , she remembered Finn saying as they had flown away from the white planet. _What can so few do against such reckless hate?_ But across the galaxy she had felt a slight tug at the force, a small push the had given her hope. Hope, although dangerous, was scarce now, so she had clung to it like a moth to a flame. It was all that had been powering her over the last few days as she and the other Rebels had tried to reach out to their old allies again and again, hoping that they just hadn’t had the capacity to reach them in time when they stuck in that godawful mine. That they also hadn't given up hope.

She looked up at her door as it slid open with a slight hiss, revealing Rose standing on the other side. Looking tired and slightly worse for wear, her face greasy and unwashed and clothes dirty as everyone else’s. She hesitated before entering the room.  
Although she looked slightly star struck by Rey, she carried herself with an air of grim determination. She had bad news, Rey could feel it. It hung in the air like a deadweight. Rose looked at her feet, steeling herself it seemed, and Rey almost knew what she was going to say before she said it. They were losing so many. So fast.

“Rey, I —" Rose started but stopped again. She looked up and Rey could see the sadness flash in her eyes, and the slump in her posture that she hadn’t seen her before, “It’s Leia. She’s in med-bay.”

Rey’s eyes slid shut at the news. The moment she had seen the General on Crait as the rocks had lifted, she had known Leia had been running on borrowed time. Her energy signature had been frayed and tattered, fading in and out even when the woman in front of her had appeared fine. Rey had prayed she was wrong, that it was just a leftover signature, an imprint her son had left on her somehow. Maybe seeing him had shocked her, and this was the Force around her reacting. However, after hearing about her death-defying feat during the attack on the fleet, she had thought maybe her extreme use of the force so suddenly after many years of not using it at all had simply tired the woman. But she had known deep in herself that this wasn’t the case. Leia wasn't just simply tired.

Rey followed Rose out of the room and into the corridor. What remained of the Rebels, the few of them that were left, were either busying themselves patching up the ship after its damaging race through the canyons, or sleeping. Passed out in similar positions that she had been in a few moments earlier. On floors, on seats, on benches, groups huddled together for warmth as the heating was still yet to be regulated properly and so the Falcon was a few degree below what most normal people would consider comfortable.

When she was little, she had been told about the great legends of the Jedi Master Luke Skywalker, his sister Leia and best friend Hans Solo. The romanticism and heroism of their stories. Daring rescues and shattering defeats, all overcome in the end in a phenomenal victory. She thought she understood the feeling of their hardship with the scope of loss of their situations, even at the end with Luke ending up losing his father altogether. But only when it had become her reality to feel her — albeit grumpy and frustrating — Jedi master fade from the Force and see how few of her friends were left she truly understood. 

The superficial cherry on the cake was the broken heating. Force knows how long Rey had been wearing the same clothes for, and the air was tinged with not only loss, but the smell of 35 unwashed and terrified people. But there was still hope. As she turned the corner to come to face the door into the med-bay sliding open in front of her and Rose, she thought back to the hesitation she had seen in Ben. The conflict and loss she had seen when she refused his offer. The compassion and safety she had felt, flowing through their bond, as Snoke had spit down at them, instructing Keylo to kill her.

And the fact that he hadn’t.

And the joy, grim understanding, that had passed between them as they had fought together. Saved each other.

Poe was there, his back to them as he stared out into the black, silent nothingness while the ship drifted quietly through space. She could see the dazed look on his face in his reflection in the glass as she entered the room. Leia’s signature flickered in and out quietly, a candle in the breeze, generating quiet waves in the force as it did so, but there was no pain lingering within it. Poe turned and took Rose in and then Rey, not seeming to recognise either of them first, but then remembering. It almost looked like he was waking from a dream, snapping back to reality from a place far away.

“Kira says she won’t last the cycle,” Poe said flatly. The humour and light she had first seen in his face, his eyes, when they had first met had been extinguished. “We should say our goodbyes now. What is it anyway, another loss?”

Rey held her breath as Leia’s energy faded again, and stayed gone for a few seconds, before returning. Weakly, but it was still there. Simultaneously, a presence appeared in her mind where, until now, had been silence. Emptiness. Occasionally, flickers of rage and anger and hurt.

No one knew what to say. Rey least of all. She honestly hadn’t known anyone here all that long, and although she had a close bond with Finn and a developing friendship with Rose and Poe, she still had no idea how to comfort them. She barely knew how to comfort herself, and after all those lonely years on Jakku, she felt helpless in situations like this.

The presence in her mind grew more weighted, as though Ren had realised what Rey was seeing and a pang of something echoed deep into Rey’s gut. A flicker of heat rippled across her face and a flash of red in her vision turning and turning before the room righted itself and she was fully back in the med-bay. She didn’t want to feel this murderer’s pain, but when she did she ached for the man he could have been. Quietly, as Rose went over Leia’s med-monitor and started random flipping through display screens of medical information and Poe seated himself down on a chair at the side of the room, Rey centred herself, calming her thoughts and emotions, soothing her own sense of loss and helpless, grief. Acknowledging it and releasing it with her breath. Then, slowly across the bond, she sent the same soothing tendrils of light to Ren. For a moment, it seemed to work, the presence calming and hurt subsiding, but Leia’s energy dipped again and suddenly a larger sense of emptiness filled Rey as she felt Ren shut himself away from her altogether.

She sighed.

She couldn’t do anything about Ren now, but she could do something about her friends. She moved slowly from her position in the doorway into the med-bay area. It had been full the first few cycles into the flight, dealing with the smaller injuries people had obtained in the escape, and larger ones that people like Rose had sustained over the battle. But slowly, over the course of the number of cycles they had been trapped floating through the outer rim, the number of patients decreased and dropped until only a few remained. And now it was empty other than Leia.

BB8 rolled over from where he had been hidden from sight behind Leia’s bed and bumped sadly against her legs as she walked towards Poe and sat beside him. “Does anyone know what’s wrong with her?” She asked roughly but quietly.

“No.” Poe almost seemed to bend in on himself. Leia had been like a mother to him. “Kira said something about Force exhaustion. Too much power exerted at once by a Force user can be the same as a death blow for normal people. Like a car running out of fuel.” And Rey could believe it.

“There’s nothing we can do then?” She murmured. The quiet of the room seemed all-encompassing but a fragile thing no one wanted to break yet.

Poe shook his face, slumping forwards to put his head in his hands, digging his palms into his eyes and rubbing violently. “Where do we land? Where can we go from here? We have 35 men and women, one semi-trained Force-sensitive with a built-in tracking device, a decades-old ship with limited fuel supplies and few allies. How do we move forward?”

Rose turned and looked at them, brows creasing and expression darkening at this. “We did not fight our way tooth and nail out of those caves, we did not lose so many of our own, my sister included,” Rose’s voice rose a fraction as she took Poe in, “for you to give in when the going gets mildly tough!” Her tone changed slightly and expression softened a touch, “We are all grieving, all at a loss. General Organa and whether or not she makes it through this cycle, the next, or the one hundred after is inconsequential if we give up hope now. If we stop fighting. Surely you would want her to wake up to a Resistance she would be proud of.”

Rey sadly smiled at her, and knocked her shoulder against Poe gently, “There’s no other group of 35 people I’d rather be stuck with on a decades-old ship with limited fuel, few allies and no landing spot than you guys.”

Poe looked at her, the darkness in his expression lifting slightly, “And there’s no other semi-trained Force sensitive tracking device I’d rather have around than you.” 

In the bed in front of her, she saw Leia’s mouth lift slightly in a smile as her eyes fluttered in her sleep. Her Force signature strengthened slightly, filling the room with love, pride, before leaving completely. Exhausted and gone forever. Rey rested her head on Poe's shoulder, and although she felt a slap of loss, Leia’s last feelings had filled her with more than that. Gratitude, warmth, and more importantly, light.

 

***

 

On the way back to her room, Rey felt a deepening pressure in the pits of her mind. It distracted her. She stumbled slightly as the exhaustion of resisting the bond’s pull became almost too much and as the door into her small, abandoned storage room slide open her vision darkened slightly, as though an overlay had been placed on top of it, and strange shapes began to form, out of place in the empty room. 

“So he was lying,” came a strangled voice from her left, and the shadow of Ben appeared in her periphery. It grew stronger and more opaque until it was almost like he was standing in the room with her. She saw sweat drip across his brow and hair knotted and greasy, his normal cloak and mask gone, leaving her to face his raw emotions as they dance across his face. “The visions weren’t instigated by him. At least not entirely, and I don’t know if that makes this easier or worse.”

Rey knew he was talking about what Snoke had said to them in that red throne room. She stayed silent, studying him. The anger she had felt in him as he fought Luke had all but disappeared, and in its wake, a crushing sadness was left. And loneliness. She had known what it had been like to feel like this once, without her friends surrounding her and the constant companion of the dark. The silence enveloped them both, a dull numbness spread slowly through them both. She knew she would have to tell him if he didn’t already know.

 

“She’s dead,” Rey said, and she felt a wave of desolation crash over Ben as he slumped down into the ghosting outline of a bed. She didn’t know what else to say, so the silence rose back up again, engulfing them in something terrible. They sat like that, neither wanting to be alone, but neither wanting the reminder that they sought each other’s company as relief. Ben probably saw it as weakness. She saw it as a serious lapse in judgement.

“When I was growing up, I didn’t speak until I was five,” Ben spoke quietly, staring at Rey’s feet as though they held the secrets of the world. She could feel that he just didn’t want to see his own pain mirrored on her face. “I didn’t know it wasn’t normal. The only people I was ever around were Leia, Luke and Hans consistently, so everyone else just thought I was shy.” He took a breath in, as though remembering anything from before was more painful than he could bear, “But in reality, I just had a different way of communicating. I would show them images, feelings, sounds. Eventually words. She would mirror them back to me as well sometimes. Mostly though, she would tell me off and remind me to use my words." He paused again, collected himself and then continued on, words spilling out of him as though they were painful to hold in. "It became a point of contention between them, Hans would argue every night that I needed to be normal, needed to learn to be normal. And Leia would always tell him to let me be. I would learn in my own time. She would tell me I was special.” She could see something wet drop onto the floor, a tear from his face, splashing as it hit the ground. “She understood what it was to be different.”

In this moment, Rey understood a little more of Kylo and how he had come to be. A father who had never truly understood him, a mother who had abandoned him, and an uncle who had tried to kill him. “She loved you,” She offered, and into the bond sent a small pulse of light to him.

“Then why did they leave me?” He cried, anguished and suddenly angry, rejecting her compassion and tearing his lightsaber from his belt, it crackled to life, reflecting the anger in his eyes. But Rey knew it was an empty move, that there was no threat of violence. “Why do they all leave me?” Broken.

In her mind's eye, she saw herself standing up, crossing the room and lifting her hand to his face. She would cup his jaw and cheekbones and lift his sad, sad face to her’s and she would touch her forehead to his, allowing a little of her bright light into his life. She would stretch her other hand down and push her thumb down over his, her hands warming his, and turn the 'saber off. Slowly, she would sooth a little of his pain as she had tried to do before in the med-bay when he had seen flickering images of his mother lying there. She had seemed so small against the stark white of the medical room and the urge to destroy every TIE fighter and its pilot had overcome him. It was their fault his mother was like this. He had ripped out his lightsaber and —

She tore herself from his head and took a step back, the hiss of the automatic door jarring her and Kylo looked up, and realised that she had been in his head and seen his thoughts. His eyes flashed in anger, tightening his grip on his ‘saber and suddenly he disappeared. The pressure in her head alleviated and the room brightened slightly.

She felt someone move behind her, and Finn’s large hand came to rest on her shoulder through the door frame as he steadied her, grounding her as emotions whirled through her head at one hundred miles an hour. Anger at Kylo for not being the heartless killer she had thought when they had first met, complicating so much of this. Pity for him as the victim of his upbringing and the victim of Snoke. Loss for the boy he once was and the man she knows he might have been. Another a wave of darkness flashed through the bond, and her eyes dropped from Finn’s hand on her shoulder to the floor where Kylo had been sitting. A small splash of water lay on the floor where his feet would have been, and Rey knew that Ben Solo wasn't gone forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally intended to be a one-shot fic. However, my brain now has other plans and if it weren't for the fact that I have a lot of work to do tomorrow (work i procrastinated by writing this fic) and its hella late, i probably would have continued writing. I don't know when updates will come along bc my university course is stupidly crazy with contact hours so i'll probs be stressed until next week, but i'm gonna get this written. Gotta get that Star Wars fix somehow between now and December 2019 (its so far away).
> 
> Unbeta'd, so if you see any mistakes, please let me know, ik i should edit this more than running it through grammarly (not spon i promise), but i'm tired n lazy.
> 
> Hope you all enjoyed, see you all whenever I manage to bang out the second part of this fic.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something(s) had to go wrong sooner or later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well my wifi cut out half way through my study session and i already had this chapter planned so voila.  
> I also realised half way through writing this that I hadn't clarified a thing, in deep space it didn't make sense for me to be writing using terminology such as day or night because i mean, there's no sun or moon to dictate when it is either day or night. so instead i figured i'd use cycle instead, as in a ship's fuelling cycle -- how long it take to use a fuel tank up -- as a standard measure of time while they were on board the falcon.  
> This is also still unbeta'd so any and all mistakes are my own, and please let me know if you have any constructive criticism. I haven't actually written since 2014 so I'm still not quite comfortable w the way I'm writing this. Dialogue is haaaaard. Anyway, hope you guys enjoy!

The Falcon was a beauty of a ship. However, it had not been built to house 35 loud and boisterous personalities. Neither had it been built to be the home of operations for the remainder of the Rebel fleet, which had lead to a lot improvisation and adaptation of areas and space to fit their needs. The small lounge area was now an impromptu bedroom for at least fifteen crew members, as well as a briefing area and mess hall, although they had to take it in shifts to eat because it got very crowded very fast. The bulkhead behind the cockpit housed several more crew members including Chewie, who refused to let anyone else pilot without him standing over their shoulder the entire time. Rey wasn’t sure she’d actually seen Chewie eat or sleep in the time they had been onboard.  
She, Finn, Poe and Rose had all taken to passing out together in the small room she had claimed as her own during the first few days on the ship. Sometimes a stray Porg found its way in, but to be honest the creatures were harmless at worst and sometimes made for a good hot water bottle at best.

She and Finn had been scouring old Rebel databases and had found an old Rebel outpost which had acted as more of a safe house and distribution centre than a base of operations in the days of the Empire. As a result, it was relatively small, unknown and untargeted during attacks. What’s more, it was within the range of their fuel supplies and had been largely self-sufficient, running on crops and agro produced by residents.  
“So, we will be setting a course for the planet Iketh as soon as possible. All in all it should take us two cycles in light speed to reach, and from there we will plan our next move.” Poe stood behind a holo-projection. He was in the middle of briefing the crew, bringing them up to speed on their findings. A picture of the small, green planet span on the holodesk, shining a ghostly light in the darkened room.

“From there, we will also be sending out the remaining members of blue team to make contact with allies who have been more receptive to us during communications. I will brief your team individually on who you are looking to make contact with and what information to relay when we reach base.” Rey saw Poe take a step back into the darkness away from the holodesk, and shut the projection off with a click. The room was nearly black, and from her vantage point behind Poe, she could see outlines of people shifting in the dark in the few seconds before the overhead lights came back on again. A few looked uneasy, but after news that they weren’t just going to spend eternity floating through space, most had relaxed from the tense and stressed postures they had all carried themselves in over the last few days. The room felt lighter.

“Finally, we are going to hold the funeral for General Organa and a remembrance service for those who had lost their lives to the First Order in recent battles at the start of the next cycle.” Rey could hear the slight crack in Poe’s voice as he mentioned his mentor’s name and saw Finn reach his hand out to him, brushing Poe’s back, and his posture relax marginally. Interesting. “Anyone who wishes to say a few words are welcome to. That will be all for now." The crowd dispersed with the exception of the piloting team, who were drawing up shifts for the next two cycles.

Rey had originally offered to stay out of the briefing due to the complications caused by having a direct line to the new Supreme Leader of the First Order, but the pressure in her mind that usually signified Kylo’s presence had been absent that past few days so they figured it was okay for her to listen in as well. Besides, she was the one who had discovered Iketh as a potential base of operations, so most of what was being briefed she had already had knowledge on. He could easily find out where they were going and how long it would take them to get there. That was if he dropped the barriers between their minds.

It wasn’t that Rey wanted him in her mind. After all he’d done, Ren was the last person in the galaxy she would have wanted inside her head. But she knew he was grieving his mother, and that however much he denied it himself, he was still feeling the loss of his father too. She knew, even if it didn’t help much, the small pulses of light and calm she had sent down the bond previously had pacified him somewhat before he had shut her out. And after all, a soothed Kylo was a win for the galaxy she figured.

***

The next fuel tank was shifted into place, singalling the start of a new ship cycle, and Poe, Finn and Rey stood, hand in hand at the entrance to the airlock. Leia lay on a simple medical bed, wearing the clothes she had died in. Her badge pinned to her lapel showed her official Resistance rank as a sign of respect, and she seemed to be smiling slightly even in death. A preservation of the last feelings she had projected to Rey through the Force.  
The rebels were lined up, nearly all of them had placed some kind of token into the airlock with Leia and were to be released with her to honor and remember all of the fallen.

They were going to be released into the last free regions of the Outer Rim. Resting forever in the places they fought so hard to keep safe and free.

As a result, the small room was littered with objects, ranging in size, from small earrings and necklaces to larger figurines and letters, even one person had put a scarf and goggles on a bench. Rose stepped forward, and her hands shook as she held a piece of paper in front of her. She faced the crowd, scanning their faces and when Rey met her eyes, she sent a little light towards her to calm her nerves.

“When our mum passed,” She took a deep breath in, her entire body starting to shake and Rey saw her eyes become shiny with moisture, “my sister, Paige, wrote this for her. We never got to say it at her funeral because there wasn’t one really. So, instead, I’ll say it now.  
“A thousand times we needed you,  
A thousand times we cried,  
If love alone could have saved you,  
you never would have died,  
A heart of gold stopped beating,  
Two broken eyes closed to rest,  
When you left, you took with you our best.  
Never a day goes by when you aren’t a part of my soul and heart.”

Rey felt tears prick at her eyes, a hand felt clamped around her heart. As Rose stepped forward into the crowd again and turned to face the glass door, Poe stepped forward and placed his hand on the airlock release button.

“They shall not grow old, as we who are left grow old,” came a voice from the crowd, singing a haunting tune. “Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn,” Yrin, a lower rank mechanic, stepped forward out of the crowd, as more voice joined her in on the Coruscant mourning song until nearly everyone was singing in unison. “At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them.” The room fell silent and held its breath as Poe pushed the release button. Without a sound, the outer door released and everything in the room was swept into the dark expanse and tears finally fell from Rey’s eyes.

  
After she followed Finn and Poe back to their bunk room and sat next Finn on his bed, Rose was lying on the bunk above them and Poe started rummaging through a bag next to his bed. The lines in his face had been ironed out when they had found a base and he looked lighter, and Finn looked better too. Although they had suffered losses and had no real plan, they were moving forward. She made a split second decision.

“So, never guess what I found in the compartments under the floor near the gunner’s well.” She poked Finn with her finger lightly as she spoke, a small smile breaking out on her face. Finn turned his face to her’s lifting an eyebrow and Poe looked up from his bag in curiosity. “Craven wine. The best vineyards this side of Coruscant. I was going to save it until we got to the base, but I figure finding one is enough to allow for a little celebration.”

“Oh, and you just now decided to share this with us?” Poe pointed his finger towards the door, “Go on, go fetch. We probably won’t be needed for a little while, at least until we near Iketh.”  
“What, you trust her not to steal the best stuff for herself?” Finn joked, “We should probably escort her to make sure the good get back here safely without tampering with.”

And that was how they found themselves not forty-five minutes later, passing a bottle of ‘389 Craven red between them, giggling to themselves about how the Porgs had taken to hiding and sleeping in Chewie’s hair. The poor guy had been overrun with them since they had discovered how soft it was.

“Did you see yesterday?” Finn’s eyes were wide, his smile wider, “Chewie was feeding them. His leftover rations! There were at least three on his shoulders!”

Poe snorted, “And he complains about how they follow him around.”

“Let’s be real, between us he totally loves those big-eyed doozies,” Rose said through laughter, “Couldn’t he just be a dog or a cat person?”

“Oh Force,” Rey exclaimed, “Imagine him with cats. They’d spend all day grooming him!” And at the mental image, they all burst into new waves of laughter. Rey never wanted to leave this room. It felt lighter in here, safe. A little haven the four of them had created from the stress of the rest of the ship.

For the next several hours they played stupid drinking games like fuzzy duck and Lasat market until they couldn’t drink anymore and they had run out rhyming words. After Poe had tried to start a round of fuzzy duck with the word ‘orange’ and Rose had thrown a pillow at him, they’d fallen into a comfortable silence that had stretched lazily between them and slowly one by one they had drifted off. An oasis of calm. Just as she was about to drift off she felt a stirring beside her, and she turned her head to see brown eyes gazing out at her from behind a mass of curling black hair. A hand reached out brushed her forehead and then her cheeks, before flickering out of her sight and she closed her eyes and she faded from the world too for a while.

***

Rey was woken by the sounds of alarms ringing through the ship and running footsteps outside their door. As her eyes flew open, there was a loud bang on the door and yelling through it. She heard Finn startle upright on the floor below her. Rose sat up from where she was lying beside Poe, who cracked an eye open much more grumpily and reluctantly than the rest of them before realising what was happening and barring upright and out of the door, leaving the rest of them to shove their feet into their shoes and run after him to the cockpit.

“Debrief pilot, what’s going on?” Poe’s voice boomed ahead of them as they caught up with him. The walls seemed to shake with the noise and the floor definitely vibrated as people ran through the corridors. Engineers scrambled into maintenance crawl spaces trying to find the source of the problem. Everyone seemed as confused as Rey felt. There weren’t any shots being fired at them as far as they could tell, so there was no new damage to the ship. Everything was meant to hold up until they got to the base. Everything had to hold until they reached the base.

“We’re not sure,” Squeaked the small man in the pilot chair. He must’ve convinced Chewie to take a break from piloting the ship. “We’re not being followed, or tracked, there hasn’t been any new damage sustained, and there’s no forecast rubble ahead of us. We have no idea.”

The pilot shrank away from Poe’s rabid gaze. “How far away from Iketh are we?” Poe asked, turning to Finn.

Finn looked over at the navigator’s maps, quickly taking in how far through their journey they were, before answering quietly, “Maybe a quarter of a cycle at best. At least several hours.”

The sound of the cockpit door opening behind them made them all turn as an engineer stumbled into the room breathlessly.

“There’s a leak!” He gasped, “The airlock won’t seal properly, and the regulators can’t keep up with the power consumption to keep the ship at in livable conditions.”

Shit. Rey’s eyes widen, and Poe went pale. He glanced around and then finally he looked at Rey. “Fix this,” he ordered her, before spewing orders about distributing oxygen tanks and masks around to crew members and putting people in thermoregulating suits.

Rey ran through the ship, feeling the oxygen get thinner and thinner as she neared the airlock. Trailing her hands along the ship's walls as she ran, she reached out with her mind, melding it with the ship. It wasn’t a living being, but it had memories. The imprints of emotion attached to the ship as she flew through its walls, searching for a fault or crack or anything that could be causing this problem. She found it within a matter of moments. In her mind's eye, she saw something trapped in the outer door of the ship, and a small crack running down the glass of the inner door. A small fragmentation that was breaking the airtight seal in the inner door, and the object stopping the seal around the external door from fully closing. She knew she couldn’t open the inner door without making the problem temporarily worse for everyone on board, but she couldn’t reach the object wedged in the outer door without opening the first one.  
Swinging into action, she ran to the nearest storage cupboard, searching for some kind of tape to seal the crack up with, to slow the loss slightly. She needed a solution and she needed a solution quickly. They barely had enough reserves to last them all the way the Iketh, so god knows how they were going to make it if she didn’t come up with something. And fast.  
“What the hell are you doing?” She suddenly asked herself, “I’m the apprentice of the last Jedi. I am one of the most powerful Force users in the galaxy. Why am I looking for tape?”

Sprinting at full speed, she made her way back to the airlock, now surrounded by people. Someone was hollering back for a laser to melt the glass around the crack to seal it and another was, same as she had been, searching through bags to find tape.

“Move all of you.” She commanded, and they parted like the sea.

Placing her palms on the cool glass she slowed her breathing. Acknowledge and release, she thought to herself, acknowledge and release. The panic was leaving her and she searched through her mind for the spark of light that filled her whenever she used the Force. Slowly, like a waking dragon, the power unfurled in her veins. It was a different power than when she was searching for the leak, a more probing, active power that filled her with calm and content. She reached out with her mind once she was full, taking her time, and felt the glint of the object stuck in the door. Slowly and carefully she tugged at it, wriggling it free with her mind. She twisted it this way and that until it fell free, hovering in the air a few millimetres from the rubber seal. She let it go, and it dropped to the floor.

The room had gone silent again, people stopping and staring as she worked. She shut them out and focused on letting the power go from her mind, acknowledge and release. She let out a breath she hadn’t known she had been holding.

She stepped back from the door, and pressed the open button, entering the airlock room. People behind her muttered about it not being safe yet, but she knew the outer door would hold now. The only thing there was left to worry about was the crack on the inner door, but that didn’t post an immediate threat.  
She bent down and let out a disbelieving laugh at the offending object. It was Rose’s necklace. She picked up, and walked out the room, searching for the girl’s signature. She found Rose bent over blueprints of the Falcon with Poe in the lounge-briefing room, clearly not having received the news the immediate danger had been bypassed. She dropped the necklace onto the table and laugh again.

“Seems like your sister didn’t want you to move on so soon.” She saiad to Rose.

Rose’s eyes widen and she picked it up of the table, staring at it for a moment before closing a fist over and putting it in her pocket.

“Not all the things in the airlock safely made their way out the door before it shut again,” Rey offered as more of an explanation, “This was jammed in the door, and the prolonged pressure difference between the airlock room and the ship caused a crack in the glass airlock door. It’s safe now though, don’t worry.”

“Yeah, but depending on whether or not we now have enough oxygen to last us the rest of flight, we might have to send some of the crew into stasis.” Rey winced, she had never been in stasis herself, but she knew it was meant to be painful. Both being put to sleep and waking up. But it definitely saved resources. The metabolic rate of those in stasis slowed to the point of deep unconsciousness. The nutrient requirements and oxygen requirements of those in stasis were much, much lower than those awake.

“I’m sure we’ll figure something out. We’re not too far from Iketh,” Finn offered, having crept into the room. “And we can offer stasis up on a volunteer basis, I’m sure people will offer.”  
They all knew they were running on fumes at the moment, but grim determination had set into all of them. They were going to make this work.

***  
When they finally touched down on Iketh, a few feet from an old and decrepit looking complex, everyone let out a collective breath. Rey even thought she heard someone start crying. The safety of the ground encompassed them, as they touched down gently. In the end, they hadn’t needed to put anyone in stasis, but they were down the last oxygen tank by the time they hit the ground. It had been seriously touch and go for a second there, but everything was fine. Everyone was okay.

From the outside of the complex, it looked like a series of old huts and half fallen buildings, but according to the plans of the safe house, there were tunnels that lead down into a much larger, underground complex that spanned nearly a mile in each direction. A few well-tended fields had been visible from the in the air, but as they landed, it seemed like the place was abandoned.  
Nevertheless, Rey argued that only a few of them should leave the ship to search for the entrance, as who knows who might have stumbled across this place after the Rebels had last abandoned it. In the end, it was decided that Rey and Finn would search for the tunnel entrance and radio back when they found it. The fewer left the ship, fewer would potentially be found if there had been some hostile person or people inhabiting the place.

Quietly, Rey and Finn approached the entrance to the hut nearest the Falcon. Inside, the stone walls were bare and vines snaked up their insides. An old broken bed was shoved into one corner and an open fire pit lay in the centre with old, dry ash and charcoal in it. The decrepit interior starkly contrasted the groomed fields and forests that surrounded the area. Rey dug around in the ashes, stretching the force out to see if she could sense an opening under the pit, but to no avail. It wasn’t there. Rey shook her head at Finn, turning towards the entrance, eyes blinded by the bright sunlight momentarily before it was blocked by a person.  
The person was holding a blaster, pointing it at Rey, their other hand reached out towards Finn and Rey felt a ripple in the force before Finn’s muscles visibly seized and he was locked in place.

Rey immediately panicked, throwing her hands in front of her, reaching for whatever power lay within her to disarm this stranger. But before she could summon anything of worth, her power seemed ripped away from her and she couldn’t do anything but stand and stare at the stranger as they threw their head back and laughed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem Rose reads was actually written by Kimberly N Chastain, and was read at my Grandpa's funeral, although I have changed a few words to fit the situation here.  
> The 'mourning song' was also taken, its poem read on memorial day in the UK, 11th November, to mark and remember the passing of military and civilians in war, and also thought it was kind of appropriate.  
> Fuzzy duck and Granny's market are also drinking games my friends and I play in real life, 10/10 would recommend.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Starts with a little Kylo flashback bc it seemed like I was forcing out words to write out the scene w Rey, Finn n *cough* a very old man *cough*. After writing that though, things seemed to flow a little more.  
> Also, I'm sorry this one's a little shorter than normal, but I had to spend all evening packing, and now I'm exhausted. Hope you guys enjoy anyway!

Kylo hadn’t felt happiness for so long. He didn’t let himself feel it, couldn’t feel it. Any emotion, happiness, contentedness, peace, it all lead to the same thing. The light, and weakness. He’d felt triumphant; an overarching, possessive pleasure in the throne room at the thought of Rey joining him, belonging to him. But he hadn’t felt simple happiness for what felt like a lifetime.

So when had come shooting down the bond, he almost hadn’t recognised the emotion.

The thing was, Kylo didn’t understand Rey. She was a complete contradiction of all the things he had been taught. Being content meant you no longer strove for more and you became passive. Being at peace meant acceptance of situations. He had been taught that the acceptance of the light as an act in itself was giving up any sort of power to change things, any strength someone might have. The light made people docile. Weak.  
He knew this.

So how was it that Rey was so strong? A force of nature to be reckoned with.

He felt the dark in her, yes, but she never fully embraced it like she did the light side of the force. So that was not what was driving her.   
And yet, she was not content with the current state of affairs as she made clear to Kylo again and again. It would perhaps have been more useful to him if she had been more docile. Peaceful.

But then she would not be the Rey he knew, and he would not be drawn to her over and over like a moth to a flame in the night. He was drawn to her light, but not just that, her fire too. Her passion for the Resistance, for their cause to help people like her.

However, the more immediate problem was that he didn’t know what to do with this emotion that was humming down the bond at him. Where to put it in himself. He knew how to deal with her rage and anger. He turned it in on himself and used it to fuel him. Make him stronger. Her hate just fuelled his own self hate and in turn, fed the dark in him. The compassion, the empathy, she had shown him recently, it had made him weaker. He knew it, felt it. And this, this uncomplicated joy, tinged with loss and sadness. It an act of resistance and defiance in of itself against all that pushed her to be angry and hateful and lost, it set him off balance.

Surely after all she had lost she should be feeling resentment, hostility towards the universe. They had lost the majority of their fleet, along with their base. Most of their best pilots had fallen and ground fighters as well as good friends, and family for some of them, all gone. And yet she could still feel this way. He didn’t understand it, couldn’t understand it.

Then again, he thought he could never feel loss again. After killing his own father, he thought he had reached his emotional capacity. He had become numb for a while before self-doubt began to creep, along with guilt and such terrible, terrible loss. It hadn’t fulled him. Instead, like Rey's empathy, it had only made him weaker. It was no victory. There had been no battle. If there had been a fight, then maybe he wouldn’t have felt this way. The anger and adrenaline would have carried him through the moment and it would have strengthened him, just like Snoke said it should have. But instead, it almost felt like his father had walked in there, knowing what was going to happen but had done it anyway. Sacrificed himself in order to bring a little humanity back to Kylo.

But once again, Kylo had been wrong. Feeling his mother fade from the force, flickering in and out of existence before finally extinguishing forever, had crippled him. He wanted to compartmentalise his emotions and never feel them again. To push them away until they were distance memories. But the bond. The Force damned bond, through which Rey offered hints of emotions — happiness, sadness, doubt, peace, love — stopped him from ever being able separate himself from his feelings. Every time he thought he had finally gotten his emotions in check, when all he had left was his anger and apathy to fill him and fuel him, the bond would push across some small portion of emotion from Rey, and all his work would come undone.

On top of all that, that someone else could make Rey feel this way. This happy. He didn’t even really want to acknowledge the emotion, let alone give a name to it.

Exhausted from fighting the bond, and his own emotions, he collapsed onto his bed. The bond mirrored his own tiredness back at him, but instead of the emotional burn out he was feeling, it was a quiet, calm sleepiness. Suddenly, the world slowed, and his dimly light room looked brighter somehow. He felt a weight on the bed behind him, and he turned his head to see Rey facing away from him, slowly drifting off on top of his sheets. Her sheets. The blur of the room she was in slightly confusing his own, although he couldn’t see details. All he could see was her. A single clarity in a foggy room. At that thought, he chuckled at his own sentimentality.

He was so tired.

 

He sat there staring at her, debating what to do in his own head, as waves of comfort and safety broke against his mind down the force. In the end, he kicked off his boots, lying down next to her. His hair fell into his eyes as he lay down on his pillow. She lazily turned her head to face him, and his breath caught in his throat. Would she shoot up awake at the sight of him? Would she feel violated that he had crept into one of her more private and vulnerable moments? The thought made him feel guilty for intruding, even though, in his own mind, it wasn’t really his fault. He hadn’t chosen for the bond to do this.

Through the bond though, he couldn’t feel any change in her. If anything, she settled down further. With a slightly shaking hand, he reached out, brushing his fingers against stands of hair that had fallen loose from her buns. He toucher her forehead. Her checks. He let his fingers linger maybe a few seconds too long, although afterwards, he wouldn’t admit it to himself. She closed her eyes and let out a breath, warming his face slightly, and the corners of her mouth lifted up in a sleepy smile. Suddenly Kylo’s eyes felt heavy too, and he barely had the strength to keep them open. The lull of calm emanating from her sang to him, and before he knew it he had relaxed into a deep, dark, empty sleep.

 

***

Rey stared at the stranger who had now stopped laughing. Cocking her head to one side, she assessed them.

“Another Force-user?” The stranger stepped into the dimness of the cave, and with the light from the sun no longer blinding her vision, she could see who it was. “I thought Ren had wiped the rest of us out long, long ago.” She queried him.

An older man stepped forward, his clothes dirty and wrinkled, seams sown and resown again. His feet were bare and his eyes shone through with humour. Through the Force, Rey couldn’t sense anything malicious. In fact, she couldn't sense much of anything at all besides Finn.

“You can't ever get rid of all Force-users, just as you can never get rid of the Force. Yes, you are strong,” He stepped forward again, nodding as though confirming something to himself, and Rey thought this man must have been a little bit _too_ touched by the Force. “I wasn’t sure it was you, but it is. What do you need child?” Rey thought this was a bit of an odd question to ask. He lowered his hand, although the blockage preventing her from accessing the Force stayed in place.

“Isn’t the better question, who are you?” Finn forced out, having visible trouble getting even his jaw to unlock from the position it had snapped into.

“Another sensitive,” the man shifted his gaze from Rey to Finn, “Although the raw power is less. You can feel it still though, yes?” And Rey heard Finn take in a sharp breath as the old man laughed again, although somewhat less maniacally this time. “Ah, you were not aware yet. You have much to learn Finn, and you,” his piercing eyes flew back round to Rey’s again, “have much to teach him, Rey from Jakku.”

“How did you —?” Rey started, but the man cut her off.

“You do not get to my age without knowing a thing or two, Rey, and the Force has been whispering your name from since before you were born. You will bring balance once again.” Yep, definitely certifiably insane, Rey thought to herself. “Your friends outside were also just yelling your names as well. I think they miss you.”

And suddenly, as clear as day, Poe’s voice could be heard from outside the hut, calling out to them. It grew louder and louder, sounding as though he was just outside, before beginning to grow more distant before being suddenly silenced again.

“Who are you?” Breathed Rey. A small nagging sensation in the back of her mind was telling her that she should recognise this man from somewhere, but she couldn’t quite place her finger on it.

“Who I am is no longer important, although once I was also called Ben. It is why I am here that is important. For many years, the Light and Dark of the Force has been in conflict. One overpowering the other during different portions of history, but the cycle always repeating itself. One triumphing, the other falling, before rising up and overcoming the other. This cannot continue.” Suddenly the blaster disappeared and the man folded his hands in front of himself. The Force around them calmed and became less suffocating. “When I was Ben, I only contributed to this. But now I see it cannot go on. You understand this, don’t you Rey? You must use what resources you have to put an end to this struggle. You _must_ create balance again.”

Suddenly Finn exploded, “What the hell do you think we’ve been trying to do?” He yelled, marching forward, arms thrown up as he gestured towards the sky in disbelief. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what rock you’ve been living under but we have been trying to create balance. We’ve been trying the overthrow the First Order and Kylo Ren, and I don’t know where you’ve been in all this time, but it sure as hell hasn’t been helping us create this new balance!” But the man — Ben — only smiled sadly.

“Have you been truly trying to create balance?” He asked gently, “Or have you been trying to overthrow the Dark completely?” Finn’s face shut down. “I should really let you get back to your friends now. I hope you take what you have learnt here to heart. Do not give up hope though. I cannot say this will end well for all of you, but I can say for generations to come, they will remember the sacrifices made by both sides to restore the balance.”

With that, a blue glow filled the room, and a palpable energy that had been filling the air vanished.

As the light subsided, Finn ran to the entrance of the hut. The sound of their names being shouted filled the clearing, but the older man was nowhere to be found.

“Where in all of the Force have you guys been?” Rose shouted as she spotted them, “We’ve been looking for you for hours!” And it was true. The sun had been high in the sky when they had landed, and it was now filling the sky with purples and blue hues as it touched the horizon line.

“We’ve only been gone a few minutes though,” Finn said slowly, looking like he was trying the puzzle all this out in his own mind. “We were just in there looking for the entrance.” Finn pointed back into the hut, “You haven’t seen an older man leave, have you? He was just talking crazy stuff at us about creating balance and the Force. He even knew Rey’s name! Said I was Force-sensitive!”

“I don’t know what you guys were doing for so long in there, but there definitely hasn’t been a random man walking around the place,” Poe said as he walked up to them, “But I hope you found something and weren’t just using the time to gossip, which is what seems more like at this point.”

“No, no, I swear we were in there, talking to an old man. He had the Force!”

 

Rey stayed quiet throughout the exchange, trying to understand what the man had been telling her. As they argued around her, she turned around and headed back into the hut to see if the man — Ben — was still in there. Peering inside, the hut was still empty, but a strange feeling in the Force still lingered. It felt like someone was watching her.

“So you guys did find the entrance after all,” Said Poe as he walked in the room, “Would have been nice of you to open with that instead of all this talk of disappearing people.”

Right behind where Rey had been standing, a small slab of rock had been lifted from the ground revealing a tunnel and ladder leading underground. That definitely hadn’t been there before. Her confusion increased and she frowned, about to object, but Poe was already heading down the tunnel. Talk of assigning guard shifts and taking stock of resources echoed back up to her as he climbed down, and Rey supposed she would have to follow him and make sure he didn’t get killed by some squatters. She would figure it all out in her head later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you're all having a lovely day/night etc. I go back to uni tomorrow so I'm not sure how quickly I'll get the next few chapters written, edited and uploaded, but I at least have a solid few scenes mapped out in my head now.  
> As always, unbeta'd so any mistakes are my own. Talking of, just read the last chapter back to myself and I'm seriously embarrassed at the number of mistakes and typos littered throughout. If anyone feels like offering to beta read after I finish a chapter that would be a serious help bc apparently I'm incapable of proof reading my own stuff.  
> Also, thank you for all the kudos and subscriptions, you guys make my day when I log on n see people are actually reading the crap I write. Much love @ you guys.


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